This was my second running race ever, and also first good test of my new toy. So lets see how I did:
Summary
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| bib number: | 1478 |
| age: | 38 |
| gender: | M |
| location: | San Jose, CA |
| overall place: | 525 out of 2386 |
| division place: | 161 out of 435 |
| gender place: | 419 out of 1286 |
| time: | 34:31 |
| pace: | 8:13 |
Ok so total time was about 22 secs. longer compared to the Great Race (4.0 miles), but the course of Pats Run was 4.2 miles, so in the end I improved my average pace from 8:32/mi to 8:13/mi - yahooooooooo!
Well... I should probably calm down, since my goal is to be able to run for 26 miles with less than 7:30/mi, so that I can qualify for the Boston Marathon.
Russ - my boot-camp instructor was also running (he improved since Great Race too - his time today was 24:13 and pace 5:46/mi). We also expected Mohamed (another fellow boot-camper) but it seems that he "no-show'ed" for the race.
But anyway - running was only half of the fun. Finally I was able to put my brand new (3 days old) toy (Garmin Forerunner 301) to a good test. For the first time I was really able to see the advantages of being able to monitor my heart-rate and pace in real-time. With continuous display of heart-rate I was able to adjust so that I don't go over my max. heart-rate. The only problem was, that when I stop paying attention (the last 0.2 mile before finish) I went too high on the HR (max for my age is 182 by text-books). I need to find out if I can set audible alert for this.
Another thing that I need to change (this time it was really my silliness) is when I start the "clock". In todays run I started the clock with a starting gun, and it took me about one and half minute to reach the starting line. The two lessons learned before the next race are:
1) stand closer to the starting line (there were people not even planning to run, way ahead of me, so I had to weave around to pass them)
2) start the clock at the start line (nobody cares how long you walk to the start line, from where you were when the race started, and it can be really long time, if you're far)
One last "convenience" item is to set the Forerunner to mark laps every mile automatically (yes it can do that). Today I forgot to mark the lap at 2 mile mark, and I ended up with 3 laps that are 1, 2 and 1 miles long respectively, instead of the 4 one mile long laps I wanted.
The "icing on the cake" is the data download, so that you can look up the race on a map, check out your performance, and graph things like heart-rate, elevation and pace to see all the details of the run. My details are again on the motionbased.com website.
So in the end it was great to have the Forerunner - I was able to better pace myself, and make the whole run more fun! for myself.
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